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More bronze plaques stolen at former Nazi prison camp

Apr 18, 2008, 16:19 GMT

Prague - Another 497 bronze plaques, likely stolen for sale as scrap, have disappeared from a cemetery at a former Nazi concentration camp in the Czech Republic, police said Friday. The thieves struck at the Theresienstadt memorial site, north of Prague, for the second time within days. Memorial employees discovered the latest theft on Thursday, or a week after they found out that 327 bronze tablets were stolen from the site, district police spokeswoman Alena Romova said. In both cases the plaques bore names of victims from the area's Jewish ghetto, Gestapo prison and concentration camps. Replacing them will cost some 2.5 million koruny (156,927 dollars), she said. Memorial director Jan Munk ruled out earlier that anti-Semitism was the motive, as thieves have been stealing metal for a decade at the site in Terezin, as the town is known in Czech. Plans to boost security at the Holocaust memorial were underway, culture ministry spokesman Jan Cieslar said. The police are to guard the site until Monday. A private security company volunteered to take over until May 18 when an annual commemoration ceremony is held, the ministry said. 'I could not look at it anymore. Those inscriptions in Terezin are not manhole covers,' the security firm's co-owner Lubos Mekota said.

Europe News

More bronze plaques stolen at former Nazi prison camp

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